CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

On May 26, 1969, New York State Justice Thomas Jones wrote to Franklin Thomas, president of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, forwarding a copy of a letter sent four days earlier from Albert Bowker to Al Vann, Chair of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Coalition on Educational Needs and Services. In that letter, which Jones attached, Bowker had expressed a wish to overcome an “impasse” between City University of New York (CUNY) officials and an appointed planning delegation from the Bedford-Stuyvesant community, led by Vann, over preferred candidates for the presidency of the new Community College 7. In his brief cover letter, Jones expressed his alarm over “the danger that we may not get Community College 7 soon, for reasons known to many of us.” In the coming weeks, Jones, with a contingent of other community members, would publicly split from Vann and his allies in a schism that in the end determined the fate of the new college.